Labour women : women in British working-class politics, 1918-1939

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Bibliographic Information

Labour women : women in British working-class politics, 1918-1939

Pamela M. Graves

Cambridge University Press, 1994

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

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Note

Bibliography: p. 258-266

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

After winning the vote in 1918, many thousands of working class women joined the Labour Party and Co-operative Movement. This book is about their struggle to find a place in the male world of organised labour politics. In the twenties, labour women challenged male leaders to give them equal status and support for their reform programmes, but the ideas were rejected. For most labour women, dedication to the class cause far outweighed their desire for power, and the struggle for 'women-power' was abandoned. Consequently, despite the common reform agendas of labour women and the middle class feminists of the era, a working alliance was never achieved. Labour Women uses oral and questionnaire testimony to draw a portrait of grass-roots activists. It contrasts labour women's failure to win power in the national organisations with their great achievements in community politics, poor law administration and municipal government.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. The doors are open - women's entry into Labour politics
  • 2. Their devotion was about equal - women and men in interwar working-class politics
  • 3. But the seats are reserved for men - the gender struggles of the twenties
  • 4. A sex question or a class question? - Labour women and feminism in the twenties
  • 5. Helping others - women in local labour politics
  • 6. Doing our bit to see that the people are not dragged down - class struggle in the thirties
  • Conclusion.

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